Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program bringing you
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news, views,
discussion, analysis,
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up-to-date information
on religious liberty events
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in the United States
and around the world.
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My guest on the program
is Commander Paul Anderson.
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Retired, but working for the
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
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in charge of the
chaplaincy program.
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But you were a military chaplain
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for many years,
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traveled the world
on Uncle Sam's power.
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I joined the Navy
because they said back
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when I was a young guy
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"Join the Navy, see the world."
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It's not just a
job. It's an adventure.
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So did you see the world
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or did you see the
inside of a lot of ships.
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I've seen a lot of the world
and truly most of it is water.
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Yes, that's true.
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Let's talk about something
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that I think you've
got a good background
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to bring to the
discussion of this.
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Years ago, I think
I told you privately,
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I went to a discussion down
at the University of Virginia.
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There were several presenters
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but one of them
was Samuel Huntington,
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who since died but he
had done a provocative study
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on the clash of civilizations.
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And he prefigured in a way
what we're now living through
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since 9/11 with the
rise of radical Islam
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and extremism to use
the politically correct.
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But in many
regards, what I see it is
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as a continuation of
some longstanding literal wars
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between religious forces
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of great groups of
people just clashing in
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and different battles and wars
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but behind it all the
different way of looking
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at the spiritual realities.
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Does it strike
you that this is--
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that we're living through this
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and it's not as simple as
just since the last shooting,
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you know, find the sign
of radicalism or whatever?
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Is there a
bigger thing going on?
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I think there is.
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I had the privilege of seeing
Sam Huntington once as well.
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And the term he coined
West taxification stays in my--
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the lexicon of my vocabulary.
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And what we're
seeing now is probably,
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tremendous backlash
to the western influences
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that have moved
around the world.
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But what we're
seeing now I think is
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the outplaying of long,
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historic challenges
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between cultures and clans.
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And in their irresolution,
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these things are
beginning to happen
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and there was a time when
travel was very difficult.
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Now you can be almost anywhere
in the world in 24 hours.
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So the things that used
to be limited to a province
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or a mountain range
can now cross oceans.
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Yeah, things feed
on themselves now,
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where in the past
they would dissipate.
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Right. Something.
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In fact, Thoreau mockingly
said in is Walden he says,
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hey, you know, what
does American need to--
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"What is the big
flapping ear of America need
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to hear about what
happens in England?"
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Because he was taken by
the idea of the Telegraph.
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That was a novelty there
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other was it
would take three weeks
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or three month for
a ship to come across
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not very news either.
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And now with cell phone cameras,
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you can record
something in Paris
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and see it in
New York in seconds.
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But and I'll even go further.
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I studied, English was my major
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and I remember I
took linguistics twice.
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It was a problem
for me both times,
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well, the history of
the language and so on.
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I did it in college and
thought that I was free of it
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and then when I
was in university,
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the same course came up
again with the same teacher.
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But I came to the
conclusion that first of all,
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we can't have truly rational
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what we think of us
human thought without language.
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We have the brain power
for it but its language.
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That communicates it.
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And different people
have different languages
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and a language determines
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the way their
brain processes reality.
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But on that, I
believe your concept
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as a transcendent of God
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and the spiritual things,
that's part of your language.
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And this is not just
doctrinal differences
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between religions and cultures.
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I think there's even a
reality perception difference.
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I think you're right.
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And that's cultural--
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culturally influenced
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and then seasoned
by personal experience.
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And at some point
it's got to be communicated
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but when you're using a--
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the limited
perspective of a human
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to describe transcendence,
language often fails.
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Yeah.
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I thought about this
last night, staying at 3ABN,
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I turned on the TV
and another network
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that I will not
mention on camera.
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But they were-- they had
a calling program on Islam.
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And I thought some of
it was a bit pejorative
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because they quoted a
lot of text that try to deny
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that Allah of the
Quran is God of the Bible.
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And I thought it was unfortunate
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because on the surface,
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this is supposed
to be the same God.
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And I remember
going to Indonesia,
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there our Adventist Church
singing from the hymn book
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and I didn't understand
their language but I noticed
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wherever it was God,
they would sing Allah.
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So clearly, I mean,
it's an interchangeable term
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but it doesn't mean because
the terms are interchangeable,
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Allah means the same thing
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in that person's
mind as God does to ours.
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Right.
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And so that, you know,
again another illustration,
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I don't think we're
talking at cross purposes even
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when we try to communicate
with these religions.
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Then you put the burden of
history, and of imperialism,
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and of World Wars I and II,
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and the fall of
nations and so on
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and the residual
hatred, even of the Crusades.
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God help us, how we
ever gonna communicate
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when the spiritual
realities are dividing us.
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Yeah.
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History certainly influences
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current perspectives
and yeah, and linguistics.
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In the United States, you
have regional variations on--
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on terms.
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Pop soda, Soda pop, same thing
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what do you call a Coke?
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And we call it different things.
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But we mean the same thing
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but you may not know
that if you weren't raised
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where that term is used.
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I'll tell you the classic,
well, it just came to mind.
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I remember being very
the news reading years ago
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and it might be a
Chinese person listening.
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He could really call me
on this but I read this that
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when Coca-Cola went to
China to enter into that market,
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they had to get a translation
of the word Coca-Cola.
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And I don't even quite
know what it means in English.
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I mean, I know
the Coke reference
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which we've forgotten.
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But anyhow,
what it really means.
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But supposedly,
the word they chose
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by some marketing person
actually, literally, meant,
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"Bite the wax tadpole."
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Wow.
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That doesn't
sound very appetizing.
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So you know, one can
get lost in the translation
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and that's just with language,
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as a language
but when you have--
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using language to communicate
spiritual differences
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and how you look
at God, Allah, God
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and all the
religious imperatives.
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I'm not saying it's
hopeless but I just do believe
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that this is a big part of the--
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what was a real
religious cultural clash
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that sits behind
the war and terror.
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Yeah, I think
that it is a good idea
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for contemporary religionists
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to be informed
beyond their own tomb.
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As Christians, I have
multiple Bibles in my home
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and in my office and I'm fairly
familiar with those 66 books
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and our perspective on that.
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But I understand the
perspective of someone
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who may not be
of my denomination.
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But I have also
picked up a Quran
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and read much of one of them--
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it was a gift and I figured out,
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honor the gift by reading it.
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It informed my ability
to dialogue with Muslims
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that I met subsequently in life.
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Yeah, and I think we need to.
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I agree with it.
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I was faced with a
moral dilemma recently.
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I've read the Quran
and I have it at home.
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But I was faced
with the moral dilemma
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recently in Turkey.
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They had their version of
the Gideon Bible in the hotel.
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And I thought long and hard,
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should I take that
version 'cause I wanted it.
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And I'm not sure,
is the Gideon Bible
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meant to be taken?
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Well, you know, they
certainly are gifts given
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by the Gideon's in the hotel,
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but I'm sure the
hotel proprietary.
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Well, it was placed
by an Islamic society.
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It was the
equivalent to the Gideon Bible.
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And it was-- was
very interesting.
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It was color
coded which actually
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had the effect the--
of sort of a color wheels
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but in front of your eyes.
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But they color coded
every word in the sentence,
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was keyed into thematic material
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in the whole Quran.
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I've never seen one of
those I'd to-- maybe next time
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I get to travel to Turkey, yes.
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But you know,
in other countries,
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obviously in an Asian
country I remember I did take
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the little book
of Buddhist sayings.
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I've read that.
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And I read the Bhagavad-Gita
and a few other things.
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Apologies to my Mormon friends
but I've struggled mightily
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to read the Book of
Mormon, but I've tried.
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And I think trying is the key.
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When we invest ourselves
in understanding others,
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then we put
ourselves in a better position
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to establish a
relevant presence in their life
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that is not
immediately marginalizing.
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I mean, I'm comfortable,
more than comfortable.
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I'm convicted of
the truth of the Bible
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and the
interpretations that informed
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Seventh-day
Adventism as a reform movement,
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preparing people
to meet the-- promise
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return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You know, I'm
not unsure of that.
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But I think it can only enriches
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when we are aware of
the spiritual realities
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and I talked a
little privately about this.
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I think the United
States, as a political entity
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is operating from a deficit
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of lack of knowledge about
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what's making the
other tick if you like.
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I see it all the time.
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And part of it
is good intentions.
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But it's a naivety
that could be almost fatal.
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I would spend the
summers of my youth
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not far from here in
East St. Louis, Illinois.
00:11:37.89\00:11:40.93
And my grandfather
would take us fishing.
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He said he wasn't
Adventist and since we were
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and my parents
objected to hunting.
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He said "I ain't
gonna take you all hunting.
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But you got to learn to fish."
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So he'd take us fishing.
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Is it catch and release?
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Catch and eat?
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Catch, clean and eat.
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And-- So he told
us that you know,
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you decide what kind of
fish you want to go for.
00:12:07.42\00:12:10.33
And it helps to know
what kind of bait they like.
00:12:10.36\00:12:13.26
So if we're going to be
effective fishers of men,
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we have to know
something about the men
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that we're trying to catch.
00:12:20.30\00:12:22.00
And we have to be
informed fishermen.
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It's a very good point.
00:12:26.34\00:12:27.68
I've just come back
from the Middle East
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and from the Sea of
Galilee and our guide
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was pushing some
of the same stuff
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but he didn't really
say the obvious thing.
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Choose your bait carefully.
00:12:37.19\00:12:38.72
Yeah, they
probably do net fishing
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over there and you just...
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Well, he raised the point
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that I never
thought of, can't prove it.
00:12:44.19\00:12:46.53
But from the shore,
He said, when Jesus said,
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"Cast your net
out the other side"
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He was in a position,
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He might have seen water roiling
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a bit from the fish there.
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Could be.
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God, just because He was God...
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Well, yes, didn't discount that.
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But He did go into a
lot of the technical things
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that were implicit in those
texts or explicit in the text
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but we don't see
it in our translation.
00:13:05.35\00:13:08.32
Like, for example,
the eye of the needle.
00:13:08.35\00:13:11.62
He said, when Jesus said that
they were mending their nets.
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And He says the-- one
of the terms used there,
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it was the needle that
they used to sew the nets.
00:13:17.93\00:13:22.13
I've always thought it
was a gate in the wall.
00:13:22.16\00:13:23.93
Well, that's what I thought.
00:13:23.97\00:13:25.37
I'm so-- here we...
00:13:25.40\00:13:26.80
Yeah, I've
learned something today.
00:13:26.84\00:13:28.34
We'll be back after a
short break. Stay with us.
00:13:28.37\00:13:30.71
Interesting discussion,
Clashes of Civilizations,
00:13:30.74\00:13:33.04
Clash of Religions.
00:13:33.07\00:13:34.41